Since last year Blockbuster Inc., a major U.S. movie rental chain, has been offering both Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs for rent in over 250 stores around the country. Once it expands its high definition offerings next month it will be exclusively renting out Blu-Ray in 1,450 of its stores. The move is based on statistics that claim consumers in Blockbuster stores are choosing Blu-Ray over HD-DVD 70 percent of the time. The availability of Blu-Ray movies greatly outnumbers those of HD-DVD. The North American HD DVD Promotional Group said the decision was shortsighted and skewed by the success of films released by Blu-ray studios in the first three months of the year

Interesting news, but I couldn't care less about which format "wins". It's the industry's fault for not being able to cooperate.

Sure HD movies will look good, but I'm not buying disks until they are cheap and players can handle any format. Hopefully this bickering will give the streaming HD companies a boost as, frankly, I'd rather do without disks altogether... it feels like such an old technology.

Mis makes a good point actually. Disks do feel like "old" technology in a way. I mean, they can get damaged and scratched and if you dont have a backup, youre left buying another copy or scrapping it altogether.

I think the difference is the sale of ps3s to be honest. Its still the cheapest BD player out. I was thinking I read that they were lowering the prices of BD players from 799 to 599 (PS3 price point) but apparently that is not the case. This is actually a good move for BB and also great news for BD as it seems its leading in the war after earlier numbers showed it lagging behind.

I would be one of the first to be able to do away with physical disks and go totally to something approximating a download/storage type of system.

However, and this is the rub, there are two things that hinder the total freedom and convenience that this alternative would offer:
1) Download speeds, even broadband, are not fast enough to download 20 to 30 gigs of data in what i would say is a reasonable amount of time, then you have timeout issues, packet drops. What if you have to start all over again. Streaming might be an option as you are not downloading the full file at one time, but that defeats the purpose of buying/owning the media.

2) Storage. If by some miracle of computer science, we all got 100Mbps download speed from our ISPs, we still need to store all that data. I realize that 1Tb hdds are starting to take a hold in the market, but at 15 to 30 gigs for 1 file, your library will quickly become to large for even a terabyte of storage. For example, if we take an average high definition file size of 20 gigs, then downloading just 5 movies will eat through 100 gigs of hard drive space. Download 50 movies and your done, new drive needed! Now I don't know about you, but my DVD collection stands at over 650 movies so even a terabyte wouldn't be sufficient.

So in essence, i think disks still have thier place even if the disks are writables archiving the downloaded files (see point #1).

Mis makes a good point actually. Disks do feel like "old" technology in a way. I mean, they can get damaged and scratched and if you dont have a backup, youre left buying another copy or scrapping it altogether.

I think the difference is the sale of ps3s to be honest. Its still the cheapest BD player out. I was thinking I read that they were lowering the prices of BD players from 799 to 599 (PS3 price point) but apparently that is not the case. This is actually a good move for BB and also great news for BD as it seems its leading in the war after earlier numbers showed it lagging behind.

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That's particularly the case when you consider how long we've had the little-shiny-disks format; seems like aeons to me. I know that Mr. and Mrs. Average won't have reliable / permanent access to high-bandwidth internet for the foreseeable future, but I can still hope that those that do can push ahead.

2) Storage. If by some miracle of computer science, we all got 100Mbps download speed from our ISPs, we still need to store all that data. I realize that 1Tb hdds are starting to take a hold in the market, but at 15 to 30 gigs for 1 file, your library will quickly become to large for even a terabyte of storage. For example, if we take an average high definition file size of 20 gigs, then downloading just 5 movies will eat through 100 gigs of hard drive space. Download 50 movies and your done, new drive needed! Now I don't know about you, but my DVD collection stands at over 650 movies so even a terabyte wouldn't be sufficient.

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650 DVDs encoded in DivX or Xvid (700MB files) would only require 445GB of storage.

I see BetaUsers point and I do have to agree. I have high speed (cable, if 1.5-3mb is considered high speed) and it would still take forever to create a collection and I'm really not thrilled about buying multiple TB hard drives or spending all that time burning my own HD/BR disks and still having to pay for it. I can see it being feasable in the future (at our rate of internet speed increases 8-10 years . . .). Why pay $-$10 when the store sells it complete for $15. There are also many of us that travel in and out of coverage all the time. I can take 30 discs in the same size case as a MyBook if not a little smaller. Although it would be great to just think of a movie and be able to download it and watch, no going out and finding it hassels.

On top of all that, if you do manage to get say even 100 movies on a single drive, what happens when that drive dies? You just lost 100 movies. At least with a disc media if something happens to one of the discs you just lose one movie.

I think the technology behind the cases the discs come in is old, not the discs themselves. I would like to see a time when movies come in those thin CD style cases or even just cardboard sleeves.

I could care less which format wins, but BR does seem to be superior, and in my opinion, if you go for the superior format, it will benefit you in the future.

Allow me to elaborate.
If you purchase a computor w/ an X800, with an AMD 3500+ and 1 gb of memory, you may save some money early on. But instead of having to upgrade in say 1 year, you may have to upgrade in 3 months!

If you purchase a Quad core PC w/ an 8800 in SLi and 4 gb of memory, you may have to spend much more initially, but since the hardware is very high end, it will out-do its time, and you will have to upgrade in a year or two.

This is what I see in the format wars. HD-DVD is cheaper, but BR is superior. (15 vs. 50 gb is a huge difference). As long as it lasts a long time (meaning the hardware has outdone itself) I could care less if either format won/lost (as long as I don't have to buy a whole new player a year later because the hardware is outdated already).

BR is a way of futureproofing I suppose. HD-DVD will become outdated as more space is needed.

This is what I see in the format wars. HD-DVD is cheaper, but BR is superior. (15 vs. 50 gb is a huge difference). As long as it lasts a long time (meaning the hardware has outdone itself) I could care less if either format won/lost (as long as I don't have to buy a whole new player a year later because the hardware is outdated already).

BR is a way of futureproofing I suppose. HD-DVD will become outdated as more space is needed.

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The only problem I see with this theory is that HD has already said it would be able to increase its density by quite a bit. I believe based on an other article they were able to claim grater than 50gb.

considering that hd dvd technology costs less the hd dvd consortium are really dropping the ball granted every ps3 has Blu-Ray but i would have expected that would have been the impetus to get a cheap Hd-dvd player on the market early. If Hd-dvd loses this next gen battle they will only have themselves for not capitalising on their lower price point.